It is known to provide a vehicular exterior rearview mirror assembly that has a curved or bent reflective element to provide a wide angle rearward field of view to the driver of the vehicle. Typical automotive mirror reflective elements incorporate convex and aspheric bends to produce the desired larger or wider field of view as compared to flat mirror reflective elements. Such curved or bent reflective elements are typically disposed at passenger side exterior rearview mirror assemblies in the U.S., given that Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard FMVSS 111 (which is hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety) prescribes that the driver side mirror element be a plane or flat mirror with unit magnification.
The application of convex and aspheric mirrors typically causes distortion of images and make it difficult for a driver to gauge distance to the rear (hence the FMVSS 111 requirement for the indication that “objects in mirror are closer than they appear”). In order to limit or reduce this distortion, the radius of curvature of the reflective element is typically in the range of about 1000 mm to about 2000 mm for passenger side convex mirrors used in the U.S. If the mirror reflective element includes an aspheric wide angle optic or element at an outboard portion thereof, such aspheric regions are typically delineated or demarcated to indicate to the driver as to the extra distorted region of the mirror reflective element. The design of such bent or curved reflective elements result in design parameters for the physical size of the outside or exterior reflective element on the particular vehicle application.
Moreover, the requirement in FMVSS 111 to utilize a plane or flat driver side mirror and the desire by automakers to provide to a driver a driver side sideward/rearward field of view on the order of about 12 degrees to about 17 degrees or thereabouts requires that the outside mirror assembly that houses such a plane or flat mirror element be sized accordingly. Stylists or designers at automakers for symmetry and appearance typically desire and require that the driver side exterior mirror assembly and the passenger side exterior mirror assembly be of similar/same dimensions, appearance, styling and the like. Thus, the size of the driver side exterior mirror assembly, driven larger as it is by the requirements to use a flat (unit magnification) driver side mirror element, defacto dictates and drives the size dimensions of the passenger side exterior mirror assembly.